Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Because of Pink Floyd, I’ve Spent Decades Undoing the Idea That There’s a Dark Side of the Moon”

In 1973, Pink Floyd released their influ­en­tial con­cept album, The Dark Side of the Moon, which gar­nered both crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess. The album sold some 45 mil­lion copies, and remained on Bill­board­’s Top LPs & Tapes chart for 741 weeks (from 1973 to 1988). All of which was great for Pink Floyd. But not so much for sci­ence and edu­ca­tion.

As Neil deGrasse Tyson explains above. “That Pink Floyd had an album with that title meant I spent decades hav­ing to undo [that fact] as an edu­ca­tor.” That’s because “there is no dark side of the moon.” “There’s a far side and there’s a near.” “But all sides of the moon receive sun­light across the month.”

To delve deep­er into this, it’s worth read­ing this short arti­cle (Myth­busters: Is There Real­ly a Dark Side of the Moon?) from Yale Sci­en­tif­ic Mag­a­zine. There, they elab­o­rate:

No mat­ter where we are on Earth, we see and always have seen only one face of the moon. Since the moon rotates on its axis in the same amount of time that it takes the body to orbit our plan­et, the same half face of the moon is con­sis­tent­ly exposed to view­ers on Earth. This tim­ing is caused by a phe­nom­e­non called tidal lock­ing, which occurs when a larg­er astro­nom­i­cal body (Earth) exerts a strong grav­i­ta­tion­al pull on a small­er body (the moon), forc­ing one side of the small­er body to always face the larg­er one.…

[T]he fact that we earth­lings can­not see the far side of the moon does not mean that this face is nev­er exposed to sun­light. In fact, the far side of the moon is no more and no less dark than the hemi­sphere we do see.

Get the rest here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

David Byrne & Neil deGrasse Tyson Explain the Impor­tance of an Arts Edu­ca­tion (and How It Strength­ens Sci­ence & Civ­i­liza­tion)

Michio Kaku & Noam Chom­sky School Moon Land­ing and 9/11 Con­spir­a­cy The­o­rists